Ramona and I have returned from a memorable two weeks on a small cruise boat on Alaska’s Inside Passage. She takes a vacation trip to some exotic location nearly every year but I mainly travel on business. I had twice been to Alaska, both times in the winter. One was to the North Slope, the […]
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Ramona and I greatly enjoy our home. It began as a log structure built from timbers I cut in the early 1970s. They were milled a mere mile west of our home site. I like that. We added to our home over the decades. Fortunately, Bob Utzinger, former dean of MSU’s School of Arts and […]
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Minorities suffer abuses when their rights to property and person are violated. We examined historical situations involving Jews and Mormons in two recent FREE Insights (May 7 and 14). The underlying logic is clear: If people’s property is not given legal protection, then it is cheap and easy to violate their persons and strip their […]
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This is the second of two essays on the contributions of property rights to peace and prosperity. The first examined the horrific problems of the Jews. Most were caused, permitted, or exacerbated by failures to recognize their property rights. This week I consider the current grazing conflict in Nevada. I am joined by FREE research […]
Read MoreThis is the first of two essays on the contributions of property rights to peace and prosperity. It’s hard to imagine a sane person who doesn’t value peace and prosperity. Yet, these are illusive, oft fleeting qualities; few people understand how well defined and defended property rights contribute to both peace and prosperity. When property […]
Read MoreGreens often condemn Americans for their allegedly prodigal treatment of natural resources and the environment. This is a common theme in the environmental literature. Ed Abbey, author of The Monkey Wrench Gang, was one of the inspirations of Earth First! His statement, “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell”, suggests the […]
Read MoreI came to Bozeman from Bloomington, Indiana in 1970. My senior colleagues at IU assured me this was a huge mistake. Their well-intended reason: Montana was a colonial economy, one isolated and insulated from cultural and commercial success. The state supplied commodities, wheat and wood, coal and copper. From the Civil War to the first […]
Read MoreFREE’s Insight of March 12 was my account of two young, attractive, and highly successful lawyers married to one another. Each had served as law clerk to Article III federal judges, an excellent career beginning. I found them and their careers especially interesting; this summer FREE is offering seminars for clerks to federal judge. As […]
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I again observe that one of the great benefits of living here is meeting a remarkable array of talented and interesting people. For example, this winter I’ve met three individuals who have recently worked in Antarctica. More recently, when skiing in the Big Sky area, Ramona and I met a surgeon who is a pioneer […]
Read MoreOne of the great benefits of living here is the remarkable array of talented and interesting people one meets in the Bozeman area. For example, I’ve met three individuals who have recently worked in Antarctica. No surprise, such encounters are common here. Last Friday, Ramona and I were skiing in the Big Sky area and […]
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